10 Johns. 365
Decided August 15, 1813
New York Supreme Court · decided 1813-08-15
IN ERB.ORs on certiorari, from a justice’s court; Brown sited Credit, before the justice, in trespass, for killing the plaintiff’s dog. The defendant pleaded not guilty. There was a trial by jury. The plaintiff proved that the defendant confessed that he shot the plaintiff’s dog, who assaulted him in the main road; and the defendant, at the trial, also confessed the fact, and the necessity of killing the dog.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1813-08-15
Cited by 7 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2007
1 federal appellate · 4 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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¶1There was no proof by which to charge the defendant, except his own confession, which the jury ought to have taken altogether, and not to have charged him with killing the dog) without giving due weight to what the defendant said, at the same time, in justification. He killed the dog, but he did so, because the dog assaulted him, in the night, in the highway. It was, therefore, a justifiable act, and the verdict of the jury was against, law and evidence.
¶2Judgment reversed. -